It’s not all that uncommon that photographers will get dinged by pucks at NHL games, but on Monday Postmedia photographer Ian Kucerak managed to capture the precise moment when he was dinged by an errant shot.

The incident occurred in the third period of Monday’s game between the Edmonton Oilers and the New York Rangers.

Kucerak was seated in the Rangers’ end zone, photographing an encounter between the Oilers’ Sam Gagner and Rangers defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk. While clicking off a series of photos, he managed to catch one a split second before the puck slammed into the front of his camera.

Gagner and Shattenkirk moments before impact.Ian Kucerak

The resulting photo shows Gagner and Shattenkirk blurred by a mysterious dark cloud. Kucerak was using a telephoto lens with a minimum focus of 1.5 metres, meaning that anything close up appears as extra blurry.

“I was lucky that it just busted the filter. The lens is fine,” he said.

What a puck looks like just before it slams into your camera.Ian Kucerak

Any NHL arena contains small holes cut in the plexiglass through which news photographers can stick cameras equipped with telephoto lenses. Cameras are rarely hit by direct shots on net, but they are frequently dinged by goalies or defenseman clearing the puck.

An exception came in 2016, when Minnesota Wild forward Tyler Graovac shot a puck directly through the photographer’s hole, drawing blood on an unfortunate photographer.